Was America Ever Great?
The futile search for America’s historical greatness
In one sentence, Republican politicians say, “Make America Great Again.” In the next, they say, “America is the greatest nation on Earth.”
Wait, but don’t those statements contradict each other?
How can you make a country great again if it is already the greatest?
Contradictions aside, both claims seemed completely false and lacked evidence to back them up. To be certain though, I decided to go on a search for America’s historical greatness to try to validate such claims. As you might expect, I came up empty.
The search didn’t take long to conduct because it was almost immediately obvious that America wasn’t great at its most basic and fundamental level.
Greatness is only achieved when a country can, at a minimum, meet a set of basic human principles that create a strong foundation.
Since the founding of this nation, its foundation has been built on the idea that all men and women are not created equal, despite the language in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. All the evidence you need to prove that can be found in the nation’s other most important founding document, the Constitution. In Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, it states:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
This is known as the Three-Fifths Compromise, the most consequential compromise in American history.
In case you forgot your U.S. history, the Three-Fifths Compromise essentially said that all non-free persons (i.e., slaves) should only be counted as three-fifths of a person. The compromise was agreed upon by the North and the South since the South benefited from lower taxes with their slaves by treating them as less than a Free person, but also received less representation for those slaves which benefited the North.
You can trace a line from that consequential compromise all the way to current wealth and health disparities that black people face compared to white people, which result in very different life outcomes, on average.
To illustrate this point, imagine a white man and a black man walk up to a poker table (and keep in mind, the black man couldn’t have even sat at the same table as the white man until the 1960s). The white man has $100 to start while the black man only has $20. The buy-in is $10. The odds of winning are also different for each man. For the white man, his odds of winning are one in three. For the black man, his odds of winning are one in six. They’re playing the exact same game, but the white man clearly has an advantage in terms of his initial capital to gamble with and the odds of him being able to win even more money.
This is but one example metaphor of the ways in which people of color are disadvantaged in America from the outset.
In other words, the game is rigged from the beginning depending on the color of your skin.
Can people of color still win the game and achieve the fabled “American dream”?
Sure. But the odds are most definitely not in their favor.
Since that is the case and is provably true, then it must follow that America’s very foundation is severely flawed. Which means everything built on top of it is vulnerable and at risk.
Would you consider a house with an unstable foundation to be a great house?
If not, then why would you consider a country with an unstable foundation to be a great country?
Despite trying to repair the cracks that resulted from a flawed foundation and trying to get the message right that all men and women are created equal through our actions, we cannot stop the cracks from reappearing because the foundation with its critical flaws is still there.
That said, trying to repair the cracks is still better than nothing and letting the whole structure collapse, but so long as the foundation remains unstable, the country can never be great.
Greatness is only achieved when a country can, at a minimum, meet a set of basic human principles that create a strong foundation.
Those five principles are:
- Every person, regardless of the color of their skin or any other personal attribute, has an equal opportunity to succeed.
- Every person has a right to vote and exercise their political voice.
- Every person does not have to live under the fear of oppression or harm.
- Every person has equal access to the basic necessities of life including education, food, water, shelter, energy, and healthcare.
- Every person receives equal justice and protection under the law.
As should be evident by the events of 2020 and events stretching back to the founding of this nation, America is not currently meeting all five of these principles and therefore cannot be considered great.
Those people who understand this and who actively work towards helping America meet these five principles are the true patriots in our society.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X. Rosa Parks. Harriet Tubman. Sojourner Truth. W.E.B. Du Bois.
These men and women understood that America was built on an unstable foundation and worked their entire lives to improve it. They are American patriots.
Not the ones who wave American flags from their boats.
When people talk about systemic racism, it’s systemic because it is present within the foundation that America is built on and has subsequently seeped into every institution that forms its structure.
If you want to end systemic racism, tweaks around the edges and repairing the cracks won’t cut it. Working to level the foundation is the only way — as great leaders have shown us throughout history.
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